Towards a rule-based matrix for evaluating distress mechanisms in bridges

The effective management of bridge stock involves making decisions as to when to repair, remedy, or do nothing, taking into account the financial and service life implications. Such decisions require a reliable diagnosis as to the cause of distress and an understanding of the likely future degradation. Such diagnoses are based on a combination of visual inspections, laboratory tests on samples and expert opinions. In addition, the choice of appropriate laboratory tests requires an understanding of the degradation mechanisms involved. Under these circumstances, the use of expert systems or evaluation tools developed from “realtime” case studies provides a promising solution in the absence of expert knowledge. This paper addresses the issues in bridge infrastructure management in Queensland, Australia. Bridges affected by alkali silica reaction and chloride induced corrosion have been investigated and the results presented using a mind mapping tool. The analysis highights that several levels of rules are required to assess the mechanism causing distress. The systematic development of a rule based approach is presented. An example of this application to a case study bridge has been used to demonstrate that preliminary results are satisfactory.

Queensland Government’s people’s question time : the challenges and opportunities of population growth in Queensland

As AITPM National President, I was invited by Queensland’s Premier, Hon. Anna Bligh MP, as an audience guest to People’s Question Time on Wednesday 24 March 2010, which focused on ‘The Challenges and Opportunities of Population Growth in Queensland’. On the panel were: Premier and Minister for the Arts, Anna Bligh; Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Kate Jones; Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Stirling Hinchliffe; Michael Rayner – Growth Management Summit Advisory Panel, Principal Director, Cox Rayner Architects; and Greg Hallam – Executive Director, Local Government Association of Queensland. The moderator for this session was Law Academic Erin O’Brien, of Queensland University of Technology.

Whole life cycle costing for Malaysia residential property development : the cultural environment

As knowledge of the residential development costing impact on resource and budgeting use increase, developers are moving towards more sustainable solution by implementing whole life cycle costing. Property management requires an understanding of infrastructure management, service life planning and quality management. Today, people are beginning to realize that effective property management in high-rise residential property can sustain the property value and maintain high returns on their investment. The continuous growth of high-rise residential properties indicates that there is a need for an effective property management system to provide a sustainable high-rise residential property development. For such reasons, this paper attempts to study the culture that have been applied due the residential property development in Malaysia as to improve to the best and sustainable practice in providing the best cost effectiveness management system in residential property development.

A crash avoidance framework for heavy equipment control systems using 3D imaging sensors

This paper presents a preliminary crash avoidance framework for heavy equipment control systems. Safe equipment operation is a major concern on construction sites since fatal on-site injuries are an industry-wide problem. The proposed framework has potential for effecting active safety for equipment operation. The framework contains algorithms for spatial modeling, object tracking, and path planning. Beyond generating spatial models in fractions of seconds, these algorithms can successfully track objects in an environment and produce a collision-free 3D motion trajectory for equipment.

Regional integration 2.0 : facilitating regional integration and development with collaborative technologies

The current global economic instability and the vulnerability of small nations provide the impetus for greater integration between the countries of the South Pacific region. This exercise is critical for their survival. Past efforts of regional integration in the South Pacific have mostly failed. However, today’s IT collaborative capabilities provide the opportunity to develop a shared IT infrastructure to facilitate integration in the South Pacific. In developing an IT-backed model of regional integration, this study identifies and reports on the antecedents of the current stage for integration in the Pacific. We conducted interviews with twenty five individuals from various sectors and find that while most respondents were optimistic about the potential of IT-backed regional integration, significant challenges exists. The study identifies and discusses these challenges providing policy implications to stakeholders in the regional integration process. The findings will assist in suggesting a model of regional integration 2.0 for the Pacific region.

A comparative analysis of the integration of SOA elements in widely-used enterprise architecture frameworks

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) has captured increasing interest as a means to systematically consolidate and manage various enterprise artefacts in order to provide holistic decision support for business/IT alignment and business/IT landscapes management. To provide a holistic perspective on the enterprise over time, EA frameworks need to co-evolve with the changes in the enterprise and its IT over time. In this paper we focus on the emergence of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). There is a need to integrate SOA with EA to keep EA relevant and to use EA products to help drive successful SOA. This paper investigates and compares the integration of SOA elements in five widely used EA frameworks: Archimate, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF), Department of Defence Architecture Framework (DoDAF) and the Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework (MODAF). It identifies what SOA elements are considered and their relative position in the overall structure. The results show that services and related elements are far from being well-integrated constructs in current EA frameworks and that the different EA frameworks integrated SOA elements in substantially different ways. Our results can support the academic EA and SOA communities with a closer and more consistent integration of EA and SOA and support practitioners in identifying an EA framework that provides the SOA support that matches their requirements.

On facilitating regional integration and economic development with collaborative technologies in the South Pacific

The current global economic instability and the vulnerability of small island nations are providing the impetus for greater integration between the countries of the South Pacific region. This exercise is critical for their survival in today’s turbulent economic environment. Past efforts of regional integration in the South Pacific have not been very successful. Reasons attributed to this outcome include issues related to damage of sovereignty, and lack of a shared integration infrastructure. Today, the IT resources with collaborative capacities provide the opportunity to develop a shared IT infrastructure to facilitate integration in the South Pacific. In an attempt to develop a model of regional integration with an IT-backed infrastructure, we identify and report on the antecedents of the current stage of regional integration, and the stakeholders’ perceived benefits of an IT resources backed regional integration in the South Pacific. Employing a case study based approach, the study finds that while most stakeholders were positive about the potential of IT-backed regional integration, significant challenges exist that hinder the realisation of this model. The study finds that facilitating IT-backed regional integration requires enabling IT infrastructure, equitable IT development in the region, greater awareness on the potential of the modern IT resources, market liberalisation of the information and telecommunications sector and greater political support for IT initiatives.

Getting a piece of the cloud

Introduction When it comes to sustainable economic development, it is hard to go past the thought of investment in information technology (IT). The foundation of sustainable economic development is sustainable infrastructure. This situation means that investment in IT is about developing sustainable IT infrastructure. An IT infrastructure is a set of IT tools on which organisations could develop applications to manage their varying business processes. At a national economic level, this is all about developing a national IT infrastructure to provide social and economic services to the various stakeholders. Current troubling economic times call for collaboration and centrality in IT infrastructure development. This notion has led to the idea of national broadband networks, sustainable telecommunication platforms, and national IT development plans and goals. However, these thoughts and actions do not directly impact the critical social and economic processes of organisations. That is, these thoughts set the tone and direction of actions

BIM-based lifecycle planning and specifications for sustainable cities of the future: A conceptual approach

Annually, several million tonnes of waste are produced from reworks, demolition, and use of substandard materials. Building Information Modelling (BIM), a digital representation of facilities and their constituent data, is a viable means of addressing some concerns about the impacts of these processes. BIM functionalities can be extended and combined with rich building information from specifications and product libraries, for efficient, streamlined design and construction. This paper conceptualises a framework for BIM-knowledge transfer from advanced economies for adaptation and use in urban development works in developing nations using the Sydney Down Under and Lagos Eko Atlantic projects as reference points. We present a scenario that highlights BIM-based lifecycle planning/specifications as agents of sustainable construction (in terms of cost and time) crucial to the quality of as-built data from early on in city development. We show how, through the use of BIM, city planners in developing nations can avoid high, retrospective (and sometimes wasteful) maintenance costs and leapfrog infrastructure management standards of advanced economies. Finally, this paper illustrates how BIM can address concerns about economic sustainability during city development in developing countries by enriching model objects with specification information sourced from a product library.

Proposta de projeto de implementação de gerenciamento de serviços de TI baseado em ITIL V3, utilizando a abordagem ITIL Lite, para o Centro de Informática da Câmara dos Deputados

Com a retirada da ITIL V2 anunciada recentemente pela OGC, organizações do mundo todo que dependem dos serviços de TI começam a pensar em, pelo menos, dar início à implementação de gerenciamento de serviços de TI baseada em ITIL na sua versão 3. A partir de desdobramentos deste cenário mundial, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo apresentar uma proposta de plano de projeto para o Centro de Informática da Câmara dos Deputados do Brasil, identificando atividades baseadas na abordagem oficial ITIL Lite, que possibilita a implantação de um subconjunto de componentes ITIL V3 de acordo com a atual situação da organização, deixando o caminho aberto para uma eventual total implementação dos processos e funções.

Report on Knowledge Exchange workshop Sustainable Business Models for Open Access Services

The work on the sustainability of organisations which exist to provide services to the Open Access community, commissioned by Knowledge Exchange, identified that such organisations need to have a business-like approach and that the absence of rigorous attention to all aspects of the business may lead to sub-optimal performance and, potentially, failure. With this in mind, a Sustainability Index was drafted for consideration by attendees at the Knowledge Exchange workshop on sustainability in Utrecht (February 2014). Over fifty participants, representing Open Access service providers, IT-infrastructure and research funders, and users,worked to making past recommendations from KE work on Open Access actionable.

O perfil dos diretores e da gestão de escolas públicas urbanas das capitais brasileiras: um estudo a partir do SAEB 2003

O presente trabalho apresentou a evolução do conceito de administração escolar até chegar a gestão, os principais modelos de gestão escolar encontrados na literatura educacional, que podemos assim dizer: gestão participativa, compartilhada e democrática. Buscou compreender o perfil dos diretores e da gestão de escolas públicas e urbanas do Brasil e de que maneira o perfil do diretor e os modelos de gestão apresentados na literatura educacional se relacionam com as características socioeconômicas médias dos alunos das escolas. O estudo fez uso dos dados do Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica SAEB 2003, referentes às séries iniciais do ensino fundamental. A análise baseou-se em estatísticas descritivas uni e bivariadas e os resultados foram analisados à luz da literatura específica. Os dados adquiridos a partir da análise das variáveis do SAEB 2003 foram confrontados com as informações teóricas pesquisadas sobre o tema. Esta pesquisa teve por principal base teórica as idéias de Anísio Teixeira, José Quirino Ribeiro e Vitor Henrique Paro, Lauro C. Wittman, Heloísa Lück, Jaap Scheerens, a respeito da administração escolar até sua evolução a gestão escolar; Pam Sammons juntamente com Fátima C. Alves, Creso Franco, Alícia Bonamino, Francisco C.Gomes e os documentos oficiais que tratam do SAEB contribuíram no estudo para a construção do perfil do diretor brasileiro e de sua gestão juntamente com as variáveis selecionadas do SAEB 2003 e no entendimento do conceito de escolas eficazes. A pesquisa revelou que o desempenho de uma gestão de qualidade pressupõe a conquista de características no sistema educacional que envolve a participação, a autonomia e a descentralização.

Política publica de saúde: análise da agenda do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Esta tese analisa a política de saúde no estado do Rio de Janeiro, focando nas modificações estruturais produzidas pela adoção da contrarreforma de natureza neoliberal. O marco temporal da análise é partir de 2006, com a eleição de Sérgio Cabral governador do estado. Num contexto histórico mais amplo, buscamos compreender os processos que conduziram as escolhas políticas desde a hegemonia da política neoliberal no Brasil na década de 1990, até a situação atual. Da análise das prioridades do governo estadual centradas na adoção de novos modelos de gestão e seus resultados, conclui-se, do ponto de vista financeiro e social, que a proposta de contrarreforma na saúde continua direcionando a política para ampliar a participação privada no setor público, que permite a transferência de recursos públicos para ente privados. Entretanto a eficiência da gestão privada se mostrou falaciosa, os quesitos de qualidade, eficiência e economicidade na assistência à saúde, usados para justificar ideologicamente a contrarreforma, não foram alcançados. Ao contrário a gestão privada ampliou os gastos operacionais em saúde e não foi capaz de manter constante a oferta de serviços.

Towards a Cyber-physical Resilience Framework for Smart Grids

As modern power grids move towards becoming a smart grid, there is an increasing reliance on the data that is transmitted and processed by ICT systems. This reliance introduces new digital attack vectors. Many of the proposed approaches that aim to address this problem largely focus on applying well-known ICT security solutions. However, what is needed are approaches that meet the complex concerns of the smart grid as a cyber-physical system. Furthermore, to support the automatic control loops that exist in a power grid, similarly automatic security and resilience mechanisms are needed that rely on minimal operator intervention. The research proposed in this paper aims to develop a framework that ensures resilient smart grid operation in light of successful cyber-attacks.

Internationalization strategy for MyHelpster.com with a focus on international market selection

International Market Selection is an important step towards a successful internationalization strategy. This is no different for startup companies like MyHelpster. This work project was intended to help MyHelpster with their internationalization process by completing the IMS portion of it. The IMS process presented in this paper lead to the conclusion that MyHelpster’s next market for expansion should be the USA. In order to find as much success as possible the author suggests being patient and only expanding when the company has the necessary capital, experience and credibility. Both primary and secondary data were used to compile the qualitative and quantitative analyses.